


Have Fun Storming the Castle!

by Mari_Knickerbocker



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: (but the right one fell on Vormir), (it was a thing that had happened and we're moving on), ALL CAPS, Don't copy to another site, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Kid Fic, M/M, Mentioned Barney Barton - Freeform, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Not Beta Read, Post-Endgame, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, SHIELD had the wrong Barton, mentioned Tony Stark, the floor is lava L A V A, we die like men - hosted on our own petard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-19 11:27:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20656472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mari_Knickerbocker/pseuds/Mari_Knickerbocker
Summary: Sometimes Bucky comes home to discover his apartment has been transformed into a lava-filled castle and that there's a couple of princes being held captive by a terrifying dragon.





	Have Fun Storming the Castle!

**Author's Note:**

> Part of this was inspired by the following hc post on tumblr.
> 
> [https://themightybento.tumblr.com/post/187412763549/caraldanvars-caraldanvars-caraldanvars](url)
> 
> The rest of this was an idea I've had for a while now I've just not typed it up. And chances are I might use it again, fair warning.

Bucky probably would never not feel an immediate rush of relief and safety wash over him them moment he opened the front door to their home, and he wouldn’t want to. Not after the years, it has taken him just to get back that sense of home he’d last had in 1943 right before he shipped out for the Western Front. Before super soldiers and the serums needed to create them. A lot of shit has happened to him in the intervening years, most of it doesn’t bear thinking about and a lot of it defies explanation. What matters to Bucky is that he’s lived though to come out the other side. More importantly that he gets to come home to this; his best guy and their favorite fella happy and healthy waiting just for him. He never thought he’d get to keep Steve. If the punks health wasn’t going to put a premature end to their relationship then society's attitude towards homosexuality at the time would have. One of them was bound to slip up. Either Steve because he didn’t believe in hiding or Bucky because he was so goddamn paranoid that he would have let the cat outta the bag just accusing someone of knowing their secret and then trying to threaten them into shutting up about it. The fact that here in the future most didn’t think they needed to be locked up for loving each other was unbelievable. That they had gotten to include Sam in their relationship and no one looked twice at them for taking advantage of loving such a man as well as each other, was indescribable. 

Yeah, for Bucky it was always going to be a good feeling coming back home after a long day of ‘Avenger-ing’, or in today’s case rebuilding from the snap, to walk in the door kick off his half-tied combat boots and with a relaxed sigh shuffled further into the apartment. Only today he didn’t get very far before a small voice startled him with a shouted:

“Look out, Unca Buck! The floor’s lava!”

Bucky, who reacted with the honed instincts of a trained operative - that’s his story and he’s sticking to it _goddamn it **Samuel**_ \- had already leaped into the air like a scalded cat. Only to land on his ass with an ungainly ‘plop’ in the seat of the big leather recliner Steve liked to curl up in to do his crosswords. Thank goodness the oversized recliner was so close to the intersection of the front hallway, living room and the hall that lead off towards the bedrooms otherwise he would have been walking away with rug burns on his ass. Not really his idea of a good time.

Looking through his flopped over fringe Bucky could see Sam and Morgan, standing on the nearest arm of the matching leather couch, giggling uncontrollably at him. 

“Man, you near hit the roof,” Sam informed him through his laughter. “Isn’t Uncle Bucky just the silliest?” He asked Morgan. She nodded enthusiastically in reply.

“Yeah, yeah laugh it up chuckleheads,” Bucky gripped goodnaturedly. Not put out by their laughter in the least, he actually enjoyed hearing it. For a while there after Tony…, well after Tony’s funeral Morgan didn’t really laugh much and Bucky was afraid that she would be scared of him. He hadn’t wanted two generations of Stark’s hating him for outliving their parents. Turns out he needn’t had worried. Tony, Tony had actually taught Morgan that Bucky was just one of the many aunts and uncles she hadn’t had a chance to meet yet but was gonna love her anyways. 

“What are you two up to? How’d we get a houseful of lava?” Bucky asked looking around curiously. Now that he was paying attention he noticed how various pillows, a few folded over blankets, a hula hoop, and even Steve’s original shield, were strategically placed throughout the apartment. All designed to help them clamber from piece of furniture to piece of furniture without touching the plush carpet as much as possible. 

“Stevie and Abe have been captured by an evil dragon and we’re gonna rescue ‘em,” Morgan explains leaning forward in her enthusiasm. Sam has the foresight to grab ahold of her by the ‘x’ juncture of the back of her overall straps to keep her from face planting.

“They’ve what now!?!” Bucky exclaimed sitting upright in the recliner and projecting concerned for all he was worth.

“I know,” Sam agreed showing just about as much shock as someone used to Steve’s shenanigans could - which is about as much enthusiasm required to watch paint dry. “Had a hard time believing it myself, that Steve, regular ol’ Dennis the Menace type.”

“I told you, Sammy, it was Abe who got captured first and Stevie went to rescue him.”

“Oh, my mistake. Forgive me.”

“It’s okay.”

“Phew,” Sam mimed wiping the sweat off of his brow, “that is such a relief, I just can’t tell you how much.”

Bucky stifled a smile and squirmed around so that he was sitting on his knees. Watching Sam interact with children always gave him such a strong case of the butterflies. Just so much warmth floating throughout his body, reading from his center to tingle in his toes and fingertips that he didn’t always know how to handle it. Sometimes Bucky thought that if you plugged him into the grid after an hour or two of hanging out with his fellas, just being in their presence, basking in their company like a cat in sunshine, that he could power the whole city for decades to come.

“So you’re on a rescue mission huh?” Bucky prompted the five-year-old.

“Uh-huh, and now you’re here, you can help too!”

Bucky paused to think about that a moment: 

“An evil dragon, a couple of princes in need of rescuing, Knight Morgan Stark already on the case - do you know what I think will help make this quest a success?”

“What!!”

“Yeah, JB what?” Sam echoed with slightly less enthusiasm and a tad bit more suspicion. Which, was just rude and uncalled for but made Bucky smile all the wider. He could already anticipate the affectionately pained groan Sam was about to subject him too.

“W-e-l-l,” Bucky drew the word out recentering his balance on his kneecaps and the balls of his feet. “It sounds like to me that you could use some help from the Falcon and the Winter Soldier!”

He finished with a shouted flourish springing up onto his feet and striking a gallant pose. One leg raised with his foot resting on the arm of the chair, his metal fist resting on his hip and the other hand pointed skyward like an exclamation point, head cocked back with a devil-may-care grin. The perfect imitation of Errol Flynn’s ‘Robin Hood’ just before he stormed the castle for the grand rescue.

As predicted Sam groaned while Morgan giggled delightedly.

“C’mon Sammy ya know we’re the best ones qualified to help,” Bucky cajoled, making his eyes get big and round. Steve might be able to give him a run for his money when it came to the puppy-eyed look but no one could really hold up against it when he through in the slight quivering of his lower lip.

“Unca Sam we gotta!” Morgan agreed turning around and jumping up so that she was practically hanging off of his neck. Sam wrapped an arm securely around her waist and hoisted her up on a hip, nodding solemnly the entire time.

“Of course, you both are absolutely right,” Sam agreed sounding like he had only just now seen the error of his ways. But Bucky had known from the warm glint in his eyes and the flashes of both the gap in his smile and the dimples in his cheek that Sam had been on board with the plan to rescue Stevie and Abe from the evil dragon from the word ‘go’. “Only Ser Morgan and her trusty sidekicks the Winter Soldier and the Falcon could manage to save the princes.”

“Sammy! There’s no sidekicks on a team!”

“Yeah, Sam no sidekicks on a team,” Bucky echoes climbing off the couch and onto the folded Iron Man ™ blanket he’d just notice was in between the two pieces of furniture.

“Except for?” Sam prompts Morgan.

“Bucky!” She exclaims happily launching herself from Sam's arms to Bucky’s completely trusting him to catch her. “Bucky’s always a sidekick!”

“That’s right baby girl.”

“Hey now,” Bucky protested shuffling over on the blanket with Morgan still in his arms so that Sam could pass them on his way to the next safe lava free zone. “That’s just not true.”

“I have comic books that say otherwise,” Sam taunts him from his spot balancing on a pink fuzzy body pillow reaching back for Morgan.

“Kid,” Bucky informed Morgan hosting her across the distance of carpet turned lava, “don’t believe everything you read.” 

They proceeded to make their way down the hallway towards the master bedroom trading good-natured jabs and Morgan back and forth as they went. Until finally they came to Steve’s old shield. The original one that Howard had given him in WWII and Steve had finally set aside in Siberia at Tony’s taunting. It had been jarring to all of them when they’d gotten back to the Tower after Tony’s funeral in the wake of the reversal of Thanos and all the detestation the megalomaniac had caused to discover the shield tucked away gathering dust in a closet.

Steve, still recovering from the ordeal of returning the stones and the changes that had wrought to his body, hadn’t been available to verify the authenticity of the shield. But Bucky could. He’d seen Steve wield the shield-like an extension of his own body for the long grueling months of their war years, he knew just as well as Steve inch of its vibranium surface. Bruce had been convinced Tony had melted it down. So had Natasha. Steve, however, didn’t seem surprised to learn that it was still in one piece with the wear from that last desperate fight etched into the paint job. He seemed to understand Tony’s particular brand of sentimentality better than anyone. Other than Pepper, Rhodes, and Happy that is. A shock really, since they always seemed ready to go for the throat whenever they were left alone together for more than five minutes to ever be capable of, or willing to, understand one another. 

Staring at the upside-down dome of the shield, Bucky exchanged a quick look with Sam wondering if they had finally reached an impasse in their journey to the master bedroom aka “the dragon’s lair”. Some inspiring would-be thief had unearthed the old magnetic wrist cuffs for the shield and used them to secure a rope between the gap formed by shield and uniform gauntlet with the other end wrapped around a pull-up bar installed above the bedroom door. With steady pressure, they could easily turn the shield into a slide and fly down the remaining length of the hallway - hopefully with minimal damage to both the apartment and themselves. The problem was that there didn’t appear to be a way to send the shield back down and it was either everyone went in one go, or they left someone behind. 

“Okay, Sam get on but face me, I’ll hand you, Morgan, then get on myself. Once I’m on you’re going to put Morgan up on my shoulders then hang onto both us to keep us steady and I’ll pull us down the hall.” Bucky suggested. 

Sam stared at him for a moment with one eyebrow raised - clearly questioning the logic of what he was proposing before shrugging good-naturedly and stepping onto the overturned disc. The passed off Morgan once more even as Bucky shuffled his own feet in between Sam’s and the shield rocked under their combined weight. Before motioning for Sam to place the little girl up on his shoulders Bucky bent down to pick up the rope. Looking up at his guy under heavy eyelids Buck deliberately dragged the rope up along Sam’s side as he made his way back to standing.

“Barnes,” Sam grounded out sounding way too fond to be upset, “you’re a butthead.”

“Uhmph,” Bucky grunts, as Sam settles Morgan on his shoulders, “takes one to know one pal.” 

He then wraps his right arm around Sam’s trim waist and pulls him in tight while Sam mirrors him and with his free arm anchors Morgan’s perch. Sam takes the opportunity to reply by burying his face in Bucky’s neck and blowing a raspberry on the available skin. Laughing Bucky starts pulling on the rope hand over hand towing them down the hall. Morgan entertains them with a constant stream of chatter about her latest exploits in the workshop under Bruce and Friday’s supervision. Every now and then the breath from Sam giggles tickles teasingly at Bucky’s neck.

It only takes them a few minutes to travel by shield-sled and Buck finds himself wishing he could bottle the moment for all eternity. He wishes to have it safely tucked away in a jar to take out and re-exam on bad nights when a reminder of something soft and sweet goes a long way from keeping him from doing something stupid.

“We made it,” Morgan tells them. Whispering the way only a five-year-old could, which was not at all. She pulls gentle-ish on Bucky’s hair to get his attention and prods Sam in the temple.

Looking through the open bedroom door to the king-sized bed Bucky immediately spies the lump on the bed that was Steve, Abe and the “terrifying” dragon that captured them. Stevie is curled up around Abraham, the three-year-old boy they had decided to adopt when Steve made it clear he wanted to put his superheroing days behind him. 

Returning the Infinity Stones took more out of Steve than he cared to admit. But it wasn’t anything less than what he was willing to give. Bruce had intended it to be a simple straightforward mission - use the Pym Particles and put everything back into the time stream exactly where they’d taken it from - but nothing with Steve could ever be simple or straightforward, Banner should have anticipated that. Bucky certainly had. So when five minutes passed and Steve hadn’t rematerialized like planned he was disappointed but he wasn’t surprised. Truth be told, for one brief heart-stopping moment he had felt a bitter sense of betrayal and utter heartbreak. Because he was prepared to mourn Steve. Bucky had thoroughly believed that if given the opportunity, knowing what he knew if he could go and do everything over, avoid all the years of heartache and torture, live as if it had never happened then why not take that chance. He Bucky Barnes sure as fuck would. He’d go back to Brooklyn in 1942 dodge the draft take Steve with him and run to fucking outer Mongolia just to have a life of peace with him. To hell with all the rest. 

Why would Steve come back to a world that would just expect him to keep on fighting? Bucky might have been MIA again for the last five years but even he could see how tired Steve was and how much he just wanted to rest. And didn’t he deserve it? Hadn’t he earned it by now?

But he should've known better than to ever have doubted Steve. Steve, beautiful bastard that he was, came back. He just came back different is all. Gone was the strong visage of Captain America and returned was that scrawny little guy from Brooklyn. 

Steve never talked much about what he’d done while he was on his last mission. But it was clear he had done something. Some of those changes were startling, like Natasha back from the dead and the loss of the serum. Others weren’t as obvious but still noteworthy. Evidently the man everyone believed to be Clint Barton aka Hawkeye had actually been Barney Barton aka Trickshot - apparently, he’d happened to have picked up the phone when Fury called one day and decided to play along. Nat had known the difference but figured Barney wanted to turn over a new leaf so allowed things to play out. When Steve had gone to Vormir to try and get Natasha back, turns out all he had to do was simply remind Nat which Barton brother it was that had truly helped her.

Bucky’s not sure what Steve meant by that comment but it means something significant to Nat and the real Hawk-guy so he goes along with it. Ultimately it means he gets to keep a good friend and a woman who's become a sister to Steve in their lives, he’s really not in the mood to quiver over it.

Whatever else Steve did or didn’t do it cost him some of the benefits from the serum. Namely the big muscles and super strength that went along with them but also some of the health benefits. With the benefits of modern medicine, even in the post-apocalyptic world, Thanos left them in, it was manageable. More so than when they were kids. And Bucky was okay with that. It had forced Steve to slow down, which in Bucky’s mind is never a bad thing. 

Steve confessed once, both to him and Sam, that he had wanted to undo everything Thanos’ had done to Earth - both times - but it was impossible. The most he managed to fix was a few things here and there that ultimately only mitigated the damage. Things that no one would even notice had been changed, but if he’d left them alone would have made everything exponentially worse. He explained that while traveling with the Infinity Stones he discovered that there were multiple worlds out there with various different versions of them living their lives, some of them better some of them worse. And it was that discovery that made Steve face the realization that he could never, would never, fix everything done to his ‘own’ version of reality. He could keep going, out of a vain hope of making things better. But all that would accomplish was one of two things; either he wouldn’t come back to them until he was old and grey or not at all. Neither choice was acceptable to him. So, for probably the first time in his life, Steve made himself quit while he was ahead.

Bucky didn’t know for sure how Sam felt about that decision, but speaking for himself; he would be forever grateful. He’d rather have Stevie here with them, whole and healthy, than not at all. Bucky had never needed him to be ‘Cap’. Turns out, neither did Sam.

Since the loss of the serum Steve tended to tire easily and could be found taking naps in any out of the way corner he could squeeze himself into. When they got Abraham, Steve would lay down with the toddler. He said it was to keep an eye on Abe and make sure that he took his own nap but in reality because Steve liked snuggling with the little boy. He could be a bit of a baby hog. 

So really it’s no surprise to Bucky to find Steve propped up slightly by a couple of pillows curled around Abe like a pill bug with Sheamus, a mutt that they managed to pick up one day while working in the city helping to rebuild, laying across the bed in front of them both to prevent anyone from rolling off. With Sam’s cat Figaro, (his mother had insisted that he take the poor cat back now that he was home for good and Sam didn’t dare argue. It was obvious that he’d missed him just as much as he had been missed.) and Alpine curled up together by the headboard looking over them.

“Looks like the dragon asleep at the job,” Bucky whispered back only to have Sheamus lazily peek one eye open in protest.

“Is the floor in here safe?” Sam asked Morgan reaching up to pull her down off of Bucky’s shoulders. She nodded an enthusiastic yes in reply and he set her down on the carpet just inside the bedroom doorway before stepping off of the shield. Bucky followed a second behind them. The two of them crouched down to be at Morgan’s level so they could all huddle together and plan how to tackle their dragon problem. The three of them traded a series of furious whispers back and forth for a moment before smiling Sam reached into the pocket of his hoodie and revealed a medium-sized rawhide chew bone. He waggled it and raised an eyebrow.

“Well Morgan, whaddya think?” Bucky asked their fearless leader. A muffled chuckle drifted over from one of the occupants on the bed. Her mischievous grin was all the answer Bucky needed.

“Rock, paper, scissors for who gets to play the distraction?” He suggested.

“Nah, man,” Sam declined with another grin that showed off his dimple while handing off the rawhide, “I’m not the one with a kick-butt metal arm that dragon is all yours. We’ll tackle his minions,” he finished motioning to Morgan and indicating the cats.

“Sounds like a plan,” Bucky agreed putting his hand out for Morgan and Sam to stack theirs on top of. Once they did he placed the metal one on the top of the pile and raised it up with a little cheer before allowing them to break apart.

Bucky took the rawhide and with a sharp whistle waved it about to entice Sheamus down off of the bed. With the reluctance of a dog both used to and truly tested by his owners ridiculousness on a daily basis, he ambled his way off of the bed and out into the hallway after the treat Bucky tossed him. Sam carefully scooped up both cats and sent them on their way along with Sheamus. While Morgan went straight for Steve and Abe.

“Stevie! Abe! We got you, your safe now!”

“Oh! Thank goodness!” Steve exclaimed sweeping Morgan up into a big hug taking a now awake Abe along with her. “I just knew you would! And I see you got the Falcon and the Winter Soldier to help you - good thinking kiddo!”

“We were worried about you,” Sam informed him. Steve resurface from the hug with Morgan long enough to look the other man up and down and assess how serious he was. Bucky paused to do the same. There was something in Sam’s tone that suggested that Steve’s being tucked away in the bedroom wasn’t just for the sake of the game.

“I’m alright, especially now that you guys rescued me. When Nat and Clint come by to take the kids for dinner I’ll give you guys the hero's reward you both deserve. For now, Morgan, what do you think about a movie?”

Bucky shared a look with Sam but allowed himself to be suitably distracted while Morgan directed Friday to start playing her current favorite film on the bedroom tv. She tucked herself under Steve’s arm and pulled Abe in between them while pointing imperiously for Sam to lay down one side of them and Bucky the other. 

Cuddling with his fellas, what more could Bucky ask for.


End file.
